Bill Fink
Bill Fink is the revolutionary artist behind Time and Matter Photography. He captures images not by film, but by painstakingly recreating them using material from the subject.
“Time and Matter Photography creates more than a mere image; it produces an artefact that becomes a piece of history,” Bill writes on his website. “It also creates one of a kind artwork. It allows for experimentation in other fields like making pictures with enamelling, glass and ceramic decorating, leafing metals, or perhaps even scientific or criminal photography documentation.”
Bill’s medium of choice can be a bit controversial. In the past, he has used human hair, soil, and even human ashes. The image above is that of Robert Eugene Christensen – a man Bill met and photographed in 1991. Bob was dying of AIDS back then and gave Bill permission to use some of his ashes to create a memorial art picture.
Initially, Bill only displayed Bob’s memorial at various gay and lesbian centers since several curators had expressed concern for the controversial medium and topic. Society has gone a long way since then and Bill has since gone on to create ‘paintings’ that are tributes to the image they project as well as the materials they’re made from.
Made from human hair
Made from broken egg shells
Made from human hair
Made from soil
Also, unlike conventional photography where images can be reprinted as many times as possible, Bill Fink’s images are limited editions. You can only make so many hair paintings until the hair runs out. He said: “Photography makes an image from light reflecting off materials. Time and Matter Photography can capture the image and the material together as one.
Reflection
Amazing doesn't seem to do justice to the work of Bill Fink, as he has mastered a level of skill most can only dream about, and it is clear that It would take many hours to achieve such painstaking results. What interests me the most about his work though is the reasoning behind his choose of materials, as there is something greatly symbolic about creating a image from materials that belong to it. Adding a level of meaning that a photograph cannot provide, I wanted to do something similar within my own practise in the terms of using authentic materials to make work based around a site. However I don't want to fall into the coping trap, which is easy to do when you feel you have to make something to a deadline. Instead I will absorb the concept of his work and allow it to stir about my head with my own ideas until something inevitability is born.
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